Absentee ballots in high-profile Georgia are up 130 percent over the last midterms. Voters are “more engaged” and black voters are driving the surge. Experts point to Stacey Abrams’s candidacy and voting-machine concerns as reasons for this spike.

Georgia’s first female African American gubernatorial nominee ran a radically progressive campaign that should have been anathema to voters in a deep-red state. Instead, she may have provided a blueprint for her party to win in the South.